


apricity

by lilacfair



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Good feelings all around, M/M, Non-Explicit Handjobs, Pre-Canon, They're sweet, just two good guys being good to each other
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-16
Updated: 2019-12-16
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:20:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21818044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lilacfair/pseuds/lilacfair
Summary: Graham is so damnedbright, is the thing. The blissfully warm cast of sunlight across one’s face on a chilly spring day—that’s Graham—and Collins aches to stay in that light, the way a cat basks in a sunbeam streaming through a window on a cold December morning and rouses every so often to stay within the glowing rectangle that creeps across the floor.It’s like that, Collins thinks as he buries his face into the dip where Graham’s neck meets his shoulder: he just wants to stay in that warm patch of sunlight for as long as he can.
Relationships: Henry Collins/Lt Graham Gore
Comments: 9
Kudos: 40





	apricity

**Author's Note:**

> I originally posted a much shorter version of this story in the kmeme a year(!) ago, but picked it back up recently and expanded upon it a bit. Story takes place in Autumn, 1845. Not necessarily pre-canon if you reject out of hand the idea of everyone dying horribly! 
> 
> apricity: the warmth of the Sun in winter

They say that going to sea remakes a man into someone new—or maybe that it’s supposed to clarify him into the purest, most essential version of himself. Either way, the ocean is no place for a man who doesn’t know what sort of man he is.

Collins knows who he is. Or at least, he knows himself to the degree sufficient to fulfill his role aboard  _ Erebus _ , and no further. Gratuitous introspection makes him uneasy—strikes him as bordering on vanity, and Collins is not a vain man.

What he is—what he sees in his mind’s eye—is a man whose degree of competency comfortably fills the glass shape of his purpose, with nary a drop left to spill over the brim. He counts himself lucky in that regard: he’s seen men who are too clever and canny for their own position in life, as well as men who lack those qualities in the measure their lofty aspirations require. Both sorts of men are never satisfied, and inevitably come to grief.

Collins, though—Collins feels at peace, more or less, with himself and with his lot. It’s not all he dreamed of as a young man, but then, who can’t say that? It’s respectable, if a bit lonely. Some of it can’t be helped; hazard of the position, and all. Second Master might be the loneliest rank a man can attain, or so it seems at times to Collins: too high to fraternize with the able seamen, too low to presume the friendship of the other wardroom officers, Second Master amounts to a limbo in which a sailor might spend years—his entire career, even—waiting for a promotion that never comes. Not that that weighs all too heavily on Collins. He’s done well by his family, and he can live with that. He can live like this.

It’s just that he can’t  _ talk _ to anyone, and how much of that is a consequence of his rank and how much a consequence of something stoppered-up within Collins himself, he doesn’t know and doesn’t question. Either way, it couldn’t be fixed. He is who he is: dull, dutiful, stolid, staid. 

What he is  _ not _ is charming, witty, or handsome, at least not in the way men seem to admire and women seem to like. 

And so, when all accounts are balanced,  Collins can’t see why it’s  _ him _ , why Graham should favor someone like him—the lowest-ranking of the senior officers—with his grins and quiet jokes and his affection. Not Collins. Collins with his fumbling repartee and his face like a thundercloud. Or so Collins thinks to himself when alone.

He thinks about Graham when he’s alone quite a lot these days.

Graham is so damned  _ bright _ , is the thing.  Like the flame in an otherwise dark room whose image one still sees printed on the backs of one’s eyelids, even after shutting them tight.  Like the Sun, only never so harsh, never so blinding—just a ball of pure clean light and warmth, the man exudes  _ both _ , and Collins cannot help but melt before him. He has no choice in the matter, no more than a shard of ice  could choose not to melt beneath a ray  focused through a magnifying glass. The blissfully warm cast of sunlight across one’s face on a chilly spring day—that’s Graham—and Collins aches to stay in that light, the way a cat basks in a sunbeam streaming through a window on a cold December morning and rouses every so often to stay within the glowing rectangle that creeps across the floor.  _ It’s like that _ , Collins thinks as he buries his face into the dip where Graham’s neck meets his shoulder: he just wants to stay in that warm patch of sunlight for as long as he can.

It’s not dirty, what they do. It’s not like that. It’s not. Collins knows this because he’s not a dirty man, and neither is Graham, and if this were a stain on his soul he’d  _ know _ , he’s sure he would know, he’d  _ feel _ it, and he doesn’t feel it, and so it’s not like that. The circle of his reasoning on the matter closes tidily, and he does not retrace it.

It had begun ...but then, it had really begun before  _ that _ , hadn’t it? Graham would speak to Collins, yes, friendly greetings and light inquiries. He was like that with the others too, of course. But then, Graham would also draw Collins into conversations with the other officers, which no one had ever done before. Collins can’t remember anyone ever asking what he  _ thought  _ about any matter not strictly related to his position, but Gore did, and what’s more, he did so with an earnest face. 

He’d chat with Collins when their duties brought them together, as well. Truth be told, for the first month or so he’d mostly chat  _ at _ Collins—not about anything in particular—stray observations about the voyage and crew, his family, past voyages, past accidents, people he had met and known—and all of it twinkling with humor. The man had Fitzjames’s easy wit with none of the air of performance that the commander’s tales often carried. He didn’t press Collins for information, but slowly,  _ slowly _ Collins had emerged out of himself like a cicada from its old skin, and had begun to talk back. Tentatively at first, because he didn’t want to  _ disappoint _ Graham with dull, stupid insights—not when he’d come to look forward to Graham’s company like this. Yet it seemed he needn’t have worried, because Graham listened, rapt, to every word, and always sought him out again.

But for simplicity’s sake,  _ it _ —this particular manner of  _ association _ , for lack of a better word—had begun the night they’d celebrated crossing into the Arctic Circle, and Collins, never completely sure of himself in the company of the lieutenants, had been the first of the men of the wardroom to retire. He had not thought that his departure had been noted, having declined to make a production of it, but Gore had caught up to him in the walkway and asked conspiratorially if Collins wouldn’t like a nip from a bottle of brandy that he had kept for an occasion such as this, and Collins—weakened by that kindly crinkle of Graham's eyes and the humorous slant of Graham's mouth and the invitation extended to him  _ specifically _ —had accepted. 

It’s difficult for Collins to say, in retrospect, what he had expected, what he had suspected, what he had  _ hoped _ for. He isn’t sure now, and he doesn’t think he was sure at the time, either. What he was certain of was that he’d wanted Graham’s company in whatever capacity Graham wanted  _ him _ .

They’d taken a drink, but just the one, and so neither had any plausible excuse for what had happened next: sitting close together on Graham’s cramped bunk, almost touching; and then a tentative nudge of Graham’s knee against his; and then a brush of knuckles against Graham’s thigh; and then a series of questioning, increasingly unmistakable touches that either of them could have politely rebuffed at any point but hadn’t.  Collins recalls the exhilaration—that natural, instinctive nervousness of the unknown, the nervousness of  _ being _ known—mixed with the certainty that, if nothing else, there was nought to be afraid of where Graham was concerned, and that, wherever this was going, Collins wanted to let it come to him—that whatever it was, he invited it.

That was where it had begun. It had ended that night with mutual kisses—soft and exploratory and increasingly hungry—on Graham’s narrow bed, Graham palming him through his trousers while Collins gasped and hissed and spread his legs wider.

Collins had been dimly aware, as it was happening, that he should have been mortified, but Graham had nothing but more of those lovely eye-crinkling sunbeam smiles for him, both at the time of it and afterward, too—and so it had happened again and again. Collins hadn’t known at first what he ought to do, but that hadn’t seemed to bother Graham any, and in truth, Collins liked to be led. It was so easy to bend, to melt before this being of light and warmth, to mirror Graham’s touches as best as he could and to let Graham have his gentle way with him.

Collins  _ had _ been self-conscious at first, afraid that Graham would find him coarse or graceless, or that his shyness would be mistaken for aloofness, or that Graham would simply find him  _ boring _ , but as they’ve come together like this a second time and then a third and a fourth—and still Graham always greets him with a smile so pure and honest that he, without fail, returns it—Collins has relaxed into the jittery, pleasurable rhythm of it.

“I don’t understand,” Collins had whispered, once. “Why me? I’m not—I’m not—”

Graham had kissed him once beneath his ear, and then on his jaw. “Not what?”

“Not  _ interesting _ ,” Collins managed at last. “Not  _ anything _ .”

Graham had groaned softly against Collins’ throat. “I wish you could see yourself.” He drew back, and fixed Collins with a serious look that Collins could hold only for a moment before averting his eyes. “You’re remarkable...I wish you could see. I want to show you. Can I show you, Henry?” He laced his fingers with Collins’, brought the back of Collins’s hand to his lips and kissed it. 

“I’m not—”

“Marvelous,” Graham whispered, kissing Collins’s knuckles again. “Noble.” A kiss. “Gentle.” Kiss. “Handsome—should I go on?”

Collins, too overwhelmed for yea or nay, had pressed his own lips to Graham’s in response, and had felt Graham’s smile beneath them. 

That was the first time Graham had slipped a hand into Collins’s trousers while Collins lay sprawled under him (the bed just too narrow for the two of them to lie fully side by side) and touched him, and when a choked-off whimper had escaped from Collins’s throat, Graham had stroked Collins’s wrist with the pad of his thumb and whispered, “...Henry?”

“Yes,” Collins had replied breathlessly to the unspoken question. “Yes.” And afterward, he’d clung to Graham, shuddering, and Graham had only half-sighed that affectionate, warm laugh of his and stroked the nape of Collins’s neck.

Everything seems to delight Graham in equal measure: Collins’s groans and stammers as Graham’s hands and mouth take him apart, and Collins’s reverent attempts to reciprocate, with a mumbled, “I want to. Show me, please”—Graham’s hand over his, Graham’s hand in his hair—it all elicits the same bright joy from Graham, and it makes Collins willing and eager and desperate to give, to give  _ back _ , to give  _ anything _ that might bring Graham the same sparkling pleasure that Graham bestows upon him in these moments they’re alone together. 

It’s a gift of the moment, Collins knows. It cannot last, and he neither expects nor asks for it to. He is grateful, though. For Graham.  _ To _ Graham. To God? Is it blasphemous to thank God for this? Surely not. Surely he would feel shame, during and after, if it were, and yet he feels none—only a diffuse, ticklish warmth whenever Graham touches him, and a flood of gratitude.  _ Is this grace? _ he wonders, and says a short prayer of thanks without a flicker of contrition. 

They’re past the equinox now, and the days are getting shorter. Collins thinks he shall not find the winter so very dark if he can spend it in Graham’s light. He shall not find the Arctic wind so very cold if Graham is there to keep him warm.


End file.
